


five uncontrolled experiments in runaway fission

by Kleenexwoman



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Self-Harm, autistic!Holtzmann, punk!Holtzmann
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-08 01:55:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7738957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleenexwoman/pseuds/Kleenexwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nuclear fission occurs when the nucleus of an atom splits into its component parts. It can be found in naturally occurring radioactive elements, under laboratory conditions or in weapons of war, and also in the chambers of the human heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. shot them down with bottles of rocket fuel

**Author's Note:**

> from: http://ghostbusterskink.dreamwidth.org/318.html?thread=11838#cmt11838  
>  _"What can I say, I'm a glutton for pain. I'm not picky about the specifics."_

_i) I dropped out of the old school_  
_I got kicked out of the new school_  
_I got drunk with some girls from the local art school  
_ _Got caught painting on a wall "Gustav Klimt Rules"_

Jil was almost eighteen, and she was almost out of high school (she'd been accepted to Caltech and MIT, so it was just a matter of cooling her heels and trying not to snore during study hall), and she was also in love with the most beautiful human being in the world. Scarlett Cameron sat next to her in Pre-Calc (hah!), and she had the reddest natural hair Jil had ever seen and the biggest, greenest eyes of any creature on Earth. They'd been hanging out during lunch for most of the semester. Jil had finally gotten up the nerve to ask Scarlett to hang out after school, too. Scarlett had laughed and invited her to the Babalon Bitches show, which as it turned out was Scarlett's band. Which made Scarlett even cooler than she was before, if that was even possible. 

The Babalon Bitches had been doing soundcheck when one of the amps blew. Even Penny (Penny built her own synthesizers and was almost as cool as Scarlett) couldn't fix it. Jil had swung into action with the solder wand she kept in her backpack, fixed the amp, and even smoothed out the treble while boosting the bass. Then she'd grabbed the mic and sang, "Hey little girl, I wanna be your girlfriend" at Scarlett. She couldn't remember the rest of the song and that was the most important part anyway, so she sang it again and Scarlett had been like, "Shyeah." And they'd made out onstage. And the Babalon Bitches had all clapped, and Jil turned red but Scarlett was like, "And you gotta be our roadie." Jil had been like, "Shyeah," and then they'd kissed again. 

The rest of the night had been awesome, and Scarlett had rocked it out, and then Jil had waded into the mosh pit and punched some dude in the face by accident, and instead of getting mad he'd given her a high-five. Then she and Scarlett had stuck around after the show and shared a clove cigarette and some whiskey (Jil surmised they were acquired tastes), and they'd made out practically until morning, when Jil had driven her home. Jil had never been happier. She had found her people, and her people were _great_.

For once, the future seemed clear and bright, open to every possibility instead of straitened by picket fences. She was gonna spend the summer being Scarlett's roadie and traveling up and down the West Coast, away from Pasadena, away from the Lockheed internship her dad had gotten for her, away from all of the middle-class bullshit. And Scarlett said she was going to try to score some weed over the weekend, so there was another new thing to look forward to. Also the house was dark, which means her parents had gone to bed and wouldn't get mad at her for staying up so late on a school night. 

She let herself in the back door, hoping the screen wouldn't squeak this time. It did. The kitchen light flared incandescent. Marjorie Holtzmann sat in a bathrobe, hand on the light switch. 

Mom didn't look mad. Her face was drawn, tired. "Jill, where were you?" 

"Out with some friends," Jil said. She leaned against the wall. "Just, you know. Chillin'." 

"What friends?" The question wasn't meant to cut, but it did. "You've never introduced me to them, I'm sure of that." 

Because they hadn't existed until tonight, Jil thought. High school mostly meant everyone left her alone, but being alone was worse than being teased. Well, her mom called it teasing. Jil thought that was a pale imitation of the right word. "Just friends, Mom. Can I get to bed or what?" 

Mom pushed herself away from the table and tugged her bathrobe around her. "I'm just glad you're safe," she said, low enough that Jil almost didn't hear it. "I'm just glad." 

Jil took the stairs two at a time and flopped into bed with her leather jacket still on. The darkness in her room was shattered, once again, by light. "Jillian." A sterner, deeper voice. Jack Holtzmann, defense engineer, as he introduced himself to absolutely everyone. It drove Jil nuts. What, like that was all you needed to know about a person? What they did for a living? 

Dad sat down on the bed and put his hand on her back. "I assume you studied for your physics exam tomorrow." 

Jil shrugged it off. 

"I don't have to. I got into MIT." 

"That doesn't mean you can flunk a physics test." 

"It means I don't have to study to _ace_ a physics test." 

"You always need to do the work, Jillian." It was one of Dad's favorite phrases. Doing the work. Which meant doing things the hard way, usually. "The next four years are going to determine your entire future. I don't know if you understand that now, but you will later." 

"Future me can come back in time and take the physics test when she invents time travel." Jil yawned. 

"I am very tired of your flippancy." Dad didn't raise his voice. He never did, just said things in the same even, flat tone like they were an incontrovertible fact. "I didn't raise a lazy punk." 

"Well, you got one." 

"You're not rebelling, Jillian. You're just making things harder on yourself. Nobody is going to take you seriously with--" Dad waved his hand around Jil's room, indicating the Throbbing Gristle posters and the Kirk/Spock fanzines and the half-eaten sandwiches and Jil's life in general. "All of this. And if you want to succeed at Caltech, you're going to need to shape up and learn to put on a tie, or they will ship you right out." 

"This kind of stuff is high fashion at MIT," Jil said. 

"You're going to Caltech." 

"I haven't decided yet." 

"I'm paying for Caltech." 

"MIT's cheaper." 

"I'm not having this discussion with you right now." Dad got up. "And you're going to do very well on that physics test, or you are grounded." He left, not bothering to turn off the light. 

"You can't ground someone who has their own car!" Jil yelled. She threw her shoe at the pressure plate right next to the door, and the door swung shut. Jil buried her head underneath her pillow and made the really embarrassing sound she always made when she tried not to cry. Goddamn if she was going to be some waterlogged cliche about sobbing into her pillow because Daddy didn't approve of her life choices. 

She spent the night packing everything she needed into two suitcases and lobbed them from her bedroom window right into her ancient, rusty Volkswagen. Then she made a groggy appearance at breakfast, apologized to Mom for worrying her, and told Dad that she'd decided to shape up like he said. Dad grunted. Mom hugged her. Jil went to school long enough to have one last shitty cafeteria pizza and kick the physics test's pasty ass, just to show Dad. She cut study hall to mail MIT her letter of acceptance (and a separate letter, begging for a scholarship or at least a job in the cafeteria). 

Then she went to Scarlett's.


	2. Secret Service Freedom Fighting U.S.A.

ii) _I been in a lot more trouble than this before, you know_  
_Besides there's a way out of every damn situation--just give me a sec and I'll go_  
_I think the cops at the door prove something_  
_I think you and I both know_  
_You tell them anything you want_  
_but I'm out the window_

It was at MIT that Jillian learned to put on a tie. Dr. Rebecca Gorin taught her, standing in her old Victorian house in Boston, looping a silky necktie around Jillian's neck and knotting it in topographically improbable ways. Jillian could have figured it out, probably, but Dr. Gorin's hands were surprisingly soft on her skin. 

"There." Dr. Gorin stepped back. "Wonderful. Very professional." 

She'd actually offered to take Jillian dress shopping for her thesis defense. "Have you ever seen me in a dress?" Jillian had asked incredulously. 

Dr. Gorin had thought about it. "Halloween." She took all of Jillian's rhetorical questions seriously. She was right; Jillian had dressed up as Sexy Ada Lovelace Babbage to go to the first party off-campus where it was actually legal for her to drink. (Legal, hah!) "But you can't possibly go to your thesis defense in paint-spattered jeans." 

"Yeah, but I'm going to feel like an idiot in a dress." 

"It shows them you're prepared," Dr. Gorin said patiently. She occasionally lectured Jillian on social graces, but the lectures were more like being in Psych class than being chided. Or what Psych class might have been like if Jillian had ever bothered to show up. "That you weren't throwing things together at the last minute." 

"So I'll get a three-piece suit and really dazzle 'em." 

Dr. Gorin had held true to her word and taken her suit shopping. None of the girly pantsuit things they sold in the mall, either. They'd gone to a small, quiet shop with needles and thread absolutely everywhere. Jillian had buttoned up the top button of the dove-grey vest and felt herself stand up a little straighter. 

"I'm proud of you," Dr. Gorin said. She stood behind Jillian in the mirror. "I really am." 

"For figuring out cold fusion?" 

" _Maybe_ figuring out cold fusion. No, not just for that." She tucked a stray blonde curl behind Jillian's ear. "For coming this far." 

There was a lump in Jillian's throat, a little twist in her stomach that she didn't like. "Nearly three thousand miles? It killed my Volkswagen." 

"No, not the drive. Everything else." Dr. Gorin stepped back. "Look at you. Wearing a suit, following _some_ of the safety procedures...and staying on one subject long enough to collect sixty whole pages worth of work." She smiled and patted Jillian's shoulder. "Go get 'em." 

* 

"In conclusion, I'm postulating that cold fusion can take place under laboratory conditions with the substitution of americium-25 for the standard deuterium in the heavy water solution." 

Jillian had expected a torrent of questions about her procedure, set-up, records. None were forthcoming. There was an uncomfortable silence. 

"And that is my thesis," she added. 

"Ms. Holtzmann." The oldest guy on the panel raised his hand. "You do realize that you are proposing a method of addressing something that has already been completely discredited within the scientific community, and with something that doesn't even exist?" 

Jillian rolled her eyes. "It _exists_ , I said in the paper." 

"Just because it's theoretically possible--" 

"--doesn't mean it's actually possible. I know, I know, but I made some." 

"Excuse me?" 

"Me and Dr. Gorin," Jillian clarified. Dr. Gorin was a stickler for credit where credit was due. "We've successfully synthesized a disappointingly tiny amount of americium-25 under laboratory conditions. We're collaborating on a paper, but it's a little longer than this one." 

The old dude blanched. Jillian had never actually seen anyone turn white on the spot. "I don't believe that for a moment. Now if you'll excuse us--" He rose from his seat, and the panel followed. "We do have other theses to judge, Ms. Holtzmann." 

Holtzmann clutched her head and made a sound. She varied pitch until she found one that seemed to alleviate the burning, twisting feeling rising in her chest. What feeling was that? Complete humiliation? Gosh, she hadn't felt that one for a while, it was probably about due for a comeback. 

She made it to her lab space and rummaged until she found Betty. Betty had been a gag project, trying to cobble together a proton-charged teleforce ray (or "death ray", if you wanted to be sensational about it) from Nikola Tesla's notes. Then Jillian had done some preliminary experiments on proton movement with _interesting_ results. 

"Screw you," she muttered, and flopped down onto the floor with Betty and her easy-mode toolkit. 

She tightened screws on panels, resoldered wires. The burn of humiliation ebbed away, little by little. Screw them all indeed. She already knew what she needed to know. What was a few measly letters after her name? "Flunked MIT for being too radical" was the kind of thing they drooled over in Silicon Valley. She could go back to Pasadena--no, never. Maybe the Bay Area, they were usually on the cutting edge of things. Wiring shit up was definitely in her skillset, and she could probably learn how to seriously code. She could try to hook things up to the Internet that didn't really need to be hooked up to the Internet, see who'd throw money at her. Doing tech work for hipsters sounded a lot better than working at Lockheed. 

"Screw you, and you, and you." Betty might even come in handy as a prototype. She could work on the protonic release when matter was disintegrated via the particle excitement process. There was really nothing like seeing a faint beam of light punch a hole out of your least favorite mug in an explosion of harmless light, leaving the surrounding area cool and undisturbed. 

* 

She was kneeling down, elbow-deep in Betty and muttering "I'll show them, all them all!" when the door opened. She heard the click-clack of Dr. Gorin's heels. 

"I thought I'd find you here. I'm so sorry, Jillian." 

"You told me not to choose cold fusion for the application, you said it was too theoretical, I should have listened to you," Jillian recited in a monotone. She couldn't even dredge up the energy to inflect her words, wow. That was bad. Maybe that was why Dad had been such a robot, if he'd felt this shitty, this leaden, every day of his life. 

"Still, I'm sorry." Dr. Gorin put her hand on Jillian's back. Being pitied felt like sunburn. Jillian winced. 

"It's not like you're the one who fucked up." 

"I suppose." Dr. Gorin's hand slid up her back, fingers brushing over the nape of her neck, and settled in her hair. "But I hate to see you like this." 

" _I'm_ sorry." Jillian pressed her face against Dr. Gorin's slacks. There wasn't anything else she could do to keep herself from crying, so she gave up and cried. "I'm sorry I wasted all your time." 

Dr. Gorin petted her hair. "You didn't waste my time." 

"I flunked out. I could have made it, and I didn't. I fucking didn't. I blew it." 

"You did not 'blow it.' You did the work, they just didn't accept it. Jillian, listen to me." Dr. Gorin was starting to play with Jillian's hair. Jillian relaxed, a degree at a time. "You're still going to graduate. And I'm still very proud of what you've accomplished. Nobody can take the work you did away from you." 

"Okay." Jillian sniffled. If Dr. Gorin didn't think she'd blown it, maybe things really would be okay. She wrapped her arms around Dr. Gorin's waist and clung, face wet and messy, Dr. Gorin's patient fingers soothing her inch by inch. 

(Until the phone rang, and it was the NSA, and they were _aggressively_ interested in her thesis...)


	3. you like to play it safe/but you want what you paid for

_iii) Across this country filled_  
_with islands of disappointment_  
_we seek family, we find augeries and they say_  
_Stop your crying, keep on driving_  
_Things will be better in California_

The Kenneth P. Higgins Institute of Science operated around the idea that if you kept your expectations low, you'd never be disappointed. Graduates who maintained a C+ average were awarded _summa cum laude_ , tenure was awarded via dartboard, and nobody seemed to care that Professor Holtzmann wasn't actually a professor of anything. 

It was perfect. She claimed an empty lab space for her office, set up Betty and her tools, bought a bedroll, and moved in at the beginning of the summer term. Getting an apartment was out of the question on her salary, and there was a hot dog cart across the street and she had a key to the showers in the gym. Food and cleanliness provided for, she settled into her air-conditioned lab and didn't talk to anyone except the hot dog guy.

Barely a week before the beginning of the fall semester, she woke up to the sound of a key in the door. She lay still on her bedroll, all senses on alert. 

"I just got in today. Yeah, and boy are my arms are tired. I drove, what do you think? Fourteen hours--well, it took _me_ fourteen. Who knew Canada wasn't a shortcut?" It was a woman, and it sounded like she was alone. Holtzmann craned her neck to see. 

The woman backed in through the door, body-checking it with her hip. Her arms were occupied with a cardboard box that Holtzmann calculated was a little too wide to fit through the door. "Wow, you should see my new office. It's bigger than any place I've actually paid money for." 

So the idyll was over. Hopefully Holtzmann's new roommate would only be in here for a few hours a day, grading papers or whatever it was actual professors did. 

"I'm going to spend all my time in here. I might even move in. There's no way I'd find an apartment anywhere near this size." The woman set her box down and listened to the voice on the phone. "Actually, I was hoping you could help me find a place. Or maybe I could, y'know, crash with you for a while." 

A pause. "Well, you're going to be a lot busier once the semester starts. Come on, we can do lunch. I'll come up to you, you don't even have to leave the office. I'll pick up sandwiches. Erin, of course I know how to use the subway. Remember that weekend in Chicago at the X-Files Convention? I got us all the way across the city and we only got lost twice." 

Holtzmann had a bad feeling about where this conversation was going. 

"What about hot chocolate? Point taken, it's 90 out there. What about dinner? You have to leave the office at some point." The woman was getting frustrated. "Jeez, are they slave drivers?" Finally, she spoke again. "Okay. Okay. Why not?" 

Holtzmann propped herself on her elbow and felt around on the floor for her stash of plastic-wrapped cheesy crackers. She had time to unwrap one and place it in her mouth before the woman spoke again. 

"I'm not asking you to go ghost hunting. I'm just asking you to share a goddamn sandwich with me." 

Holtzmann perked up. That was one of the weirdest hobbies she'd ever heard of. 

"Okay, and maybe be roommates again." A pause. "Well, it's not like I wouldn't pay rent." Another pause. The woman turned and began to sort through her belongings. "Come on, it'll be fun. I don't think we ever fought once. Except for that time we got in a Cold War over who had to clean the tub and the gunk developed motility and I wanted to keep it as a pet...No, Molly the Dancing Fungus is long gone." 

One by one, intricate pieces of electronics were being placed on the previously empty workbench. The woman switched the phone to her other ear. "So why do you care about what they think? Uh-huh. Okay. Well, I wouldn't want to _embarrass_ you in front of your cool new colleagues. Are we still in high school? Are you finally sitting at the cheerleaders' table? I don't think eighty-year-old men who wear tweed in July make very good cheerleaders, Erin!" 

The woman turned, holding up a tangle of wires and tiny LEDs. It framed her face like a spiderweb. She had cherubic dimples and really nice eyes. Holtzmann guessed she had a gorgeous smile when she wasn't looking devastated. "Fine. I guess I'll just go and be 'Ghost Girl' all by myself. Well, I _will_. And I _won't_ mention you in my Nobel speech!" She jabbed at her phone several times. "No, _you_ hang up. ...oh. She hung up." She stared mournfully at her phone. 

"So, ghost hunting. Is it catch and release?" Holtzmann asked. "Or do you bag 'em and stuff 'em?" 

The woman didn't look up from her phone. "It's not like hunting deer. You sit around for about eight hours hoping something shows up, and it usually doesn't. Actually, no, it is like hunting deer. Who are you and how long have you been in here?" 

"Two months. Give or take a week." 

That got her to look up. "Are you a squatter? Do I have to call security? Do they even have security or is it just a janitor with a mop shiv?" 

"Holtzmann, nuclear engineering, it's a janitor with a mop shiv. He can spear a raccoon at twenty paces." 

"Wow. I didn't know this place did nuclear research." 

"They don't. I'm teaching Air Conditioning Repair and Remedial Kinetics. Also something called STE 203, but that might be a room number, I'm not really sure." 

"Abby Yates. Paranormal physics." 

"I didn't know that was a degree you could get." 

"Well, most people go to college to have _careers_ and get _tenure_ and date stingy jerks named _Greg_. Not to hunt ghosts, apparently. Seriously, are you living in here?" 

"Yes. But more importantly, do you want to help me test the sweet-ass Super Ball railgun I made? I'm going to see how many students I have to concuss before they give me a teaching assistant. I'm thinking, three." 

It turned out to be five.


	4. hope is motion--if you ain't into this then we're real done with it

_iv) Information wants to be free_  
_charged particles expand through space_  
_then bleed through greedy fingers_  
_and explode in your face_

"...so he looks up from the electron microscope, and when he does--" Holtzmann curled her hands into circles and put them around her eyes. "He went around with raccoon eyes all day!" 

"Wow, that's a great story." Dianne picked at her scone. 

Holtzmann propped her chin on her fist and tried to look cute. She had been talking about herself a lot, which was probably what had been turning Dianne off. "So what do you do?" 

"I work for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament." Dianne's apologetic half-smile seemed blindingly bright. "I guess with you being a nuclear scientist and all we probably don't have that much to talk about." 

"Oh, no, disarmament is cool. Bombs are the probably the least interesting thing you can do with nuclear materials. Like, an even _bigger_ explosion. Amazing." Holtzmann rolled her eyes. 

Dianne toyed with her pastry. "Don't you hate how they serve everything with a cake fork here? Rugelach doesn't need a cake fork. That's for actual cake. Right?" 

"Right!" Small talk didn't seem to be going well. Dianne was probably shy and needed to be put at ease. Holtzmann swiped two fingers across the cream cheese frosting heaped on top of her carrot cake. "Cake forks. Who needs 'em?" She licked the frosting off, then slid her fingers into her mouth. 

" _Wow_." Dianne couldn't seem to take her eyes off Holtzmann's mouth. "Is that--you're really--yeah. You're doing that." 

Holtzmann wiped her fingers on her jeans, encouraged. She'd spent a lot of time trying to figure out what went wrong with the last few dates. The only common factor she could isolate was that she'd held back too much. Why pretend you didn't want to give yourself to someone when she was sitting right across from you? "I'll do pretty much anything that doesn't involve a biohazard or permanent physical damage, actually." 

"That's great to know. Uh, where's the bathroom in here?" 

Holtzmann paged through a book she'd picked up from the "Employee Recommendations" rack. _The Female Man_ was a lot trippier than she'd expected, with at least four parallel universes to keep track of. She was absorbed in a discussion of polyamorous sex on a planet populated entirely by women when someone tapped her on the shoulder. 

"I just wanted to let you know that we're closing." It was the barista, who'd changed out of her apron. 

"Already?" Holtzmann checked her watch. It had been almost an hour since Dianne had gone to the bathroom. Her heart sank. 

"I can check you out at the counter if you want," the barista offered. She toyed with her blonde braids. "That's a really good book. I read it last month." 

"I guess. Sorry, I'm just wondering where my date went." 

"Oh, the girl in the Army jacket? She went out the back door a little while ago." The barista pointed. "She didn't even pay for her latte. What a bitch, right?" 

Holtzmann sighed and fished out her wallet, face burning. "I got it." 

"No, it's on the house. I meant, you're probably better off not dating someone who'd skip out on you like that." 

"Yeah. I guess." She was going monotone again. Time to head home, if she could get herself to move. There was nothing to be angry about this time, just a cold dull feeling creeping through her limbs. 

"Do you want a brownie? I'm supposed to throw them out tonight, but they're still good and I hate wasting food." 

"Chocolate's not my thing." 

"Uh, okay." The barista gazed at her with what Holtzmann assumed was pity. "Hey, do you want me to walk you home?" 

"I'm _going_." Holtzmann left. 

* 

Holtzmann slipped into the apartment and didn't touch the light switch. Abby sat in a pool of light in the kitchen. She had a carton of gelato, which meant that the papers spread over the table were meant for grading. Abby wouldn't care if she came home late from a date. Abby would undoubtedly ask her how it went, which was a question Holtzmann didn't feel like answering. Instead, she slunk into her room and closed the door behind her. 

She'd seen Abby's room; the two of them had few secrets. Abby had an actual bed, with a frame and everything. She had rugs and a dresser and framed posters of Gillian Anderson and Amanda Tapping on her wall. Holtzmann had her bedroll and blanket, a duffel bag, and two laundry baskets. She doodled on the walls in felt-tipped pen when she couldn't sleep. The blinds were broken into pieces and had been since she'd moved in. Holtzmann kicked off her boots, dropped her jacket and then her jeans and bra into a crumpled pile by the door. They'd stay there until she woke up again. Scraps of copper bit into her feet as she crossed the room, padding over raw floorboards and crushing tangles of wire under her heels. There was no way she could bring a date back here even if it went well. 

Harsh orange light slatted across her bedroll. She crawled onto the blanket, brushing away tools and bits of things as she went. She'd been playing with putting an electrostatic generator inside the shell of a toy ray gun; the project had been finished that afternoon, but she hadn't had time to test it before leaving to meet Dianne. Maybe she could try to accomplish _one_ thing today. She pressed the nose of the toy to her finger, wincing as she pulled the trigger. The resulting zap tickled. Pleased, she played the arcing squiggle of light across her fingertips. It tingled. Muscles in her hand tensed and spasmed. Who cared about a date when she had this kind of power? 

Lightning kissed her wrist. Sensitive skin stung and burned, pinpoints of sparks pricking through her arm. Her cluttered room melted away, the frustration of the evening forgotten. There was nothing but white-hot sensation against the darkness. Her fingers curled and flexed as electricity fanned through her hand. Fire crept along her nerves. She guided the ray down to her thighs. The tingle turned to stinging, and then to numbingly hot jabs of sensation that made her legs shake. She dug her nails into her hip, then into her abdomen, willing herself to keep going. Every reflex in her screamed. She fought the urge to shy away, to yank the ray away from her flesh. 

_Nobody wants to date you. You scare women. You're practically feral. You'll never get your shit together. Abby's going to find someone better and leave you here and you'll rot alone._ None of it hurt. The only thing in the world was the bright pain dancing on her skin. 

Her body succumbed. She was shaking and she couldn't stop, tearing at her thighs with ragged nails and biting her lip until she tasted blood. 

"Holtz?" Abby's voice floated through her consciousness. "I heard you yelling, is everything okay?" She was pounding at the door--no, she was standing over Holtzmann, hair down and body wrapped in a pink bathrobe. She knelt down and tore the ray gun from Holtzmann's hand. "This is _not_ how you test a prototype." 

Holtzmann didn't have the strength to protest. She lay on the bedroll, devoting her attention to breathing. Her lungs hurt. Her hands burned. Her muscles were sore and limp. 

Abby knelt between her legs, her face wrinkled in concern. She dabbed at Holtzmann's thighs with a wet cloth. It stung, but barely registered. Hydrogen peroxide, probably. She looked down to see Abby's pale hands tending to thin, oozing red scratches on her thighs. 

"Sorry," Holtzmann muttered. Her breath hitched. "Sorry you have to do this." 

"Why did you test it on _yourself_ , though?" 

"Got home early. Thought I should see if it worked before I turned in." Holtzmann shrugged, as much as she was able. 

"You mean, your date didn't go well, so you tried to end it all with a glorified joy buzzer." 

"Yeah, something like that." Holtzmann winced. Abby was still holding the cloth against her thigh. The stinging of the hydrogen peroxide was starting to intensify, reminding her too much of the electricity that had flooded her senses. If she asked nicely and looked pitiful enough, maybe Abby would agree to keep touching her like that. She didn't even need anything else. Just Abby holding her legs apart, pressing pain into her skin until she cried. 

"That has got to be the stupidest way to kill yourself," Abby muttered. She took the cloth away. "I have to worry about you frying yourself with a short circuit all day in the lab, now I have to worry about this too?" 

Holtzmann scrubbed at her eyes with her hand, gulping in air, trying to force her chest back into a steady rhythm. "I don't want you to have to worry about me." 

"Well, I do." Abby didn't sound angry. "Forget this, okay? Come watch 'Ancient Aliens' with me. They're doing an episode on Lemuria tonight." 

Holtzmann sniffled one last time and followed her out to the couch.


	5. Zen and the Art of Breaking Everything In This Room

_v) do androids dream of electronic sheep?_  
_if I should die while I'm asleep_  
_I won't stoop to prayer_  
_cause the physics were already there_

Government funding comes with strings. Maybe they're superstrings. Tug hard enough on one, and a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon and causes a monsoon in China. Compile your most promising experimental designs and send them off to Jennifer Lynch every so often, and the monsoon in China will make crates of classified radioactive materials wash up on your doorstep. Tidal patterns are interesting. 

Holtzmann's first submission to Ms. Lynch is a blueprint for a nuclear-powered bath ducky. It includes detailed notes on how to keep the plutonium core from melting the rubber of the ducky's skin, although everything is written in orange crayon. A week later, she receives her first present from Ms. Lynch. It's a vividly green glass jar shaped like a hen. Holtzmann immediately fills it with Gummi worms and discovers that storing your sweets in a container made with uranium oxide is a wonderful way to discourage casual snackers. 

Unfortunately, her Silk Road dude gets a cover story in the New York Post. "ZEN TERRORIST POPPED IN PLUTONIUM STING!" It's Thokmay looking haggard in handcuffs near the Statue of Liberty, with Lynch smiling behind him. Holtzmann gets the message and sends Lynch a few schematics, and soon she's up to her ears in rods and cores. 

* 

It's a rainy Sunday, and Holtzmann is futzing around with ghosts and radiation. She's rigged up a little cage involving leaded Plexiglass and ionically charged plasma as a kind of observation station. The last step is activating the reactor; she's opted for a simple uranium core and tungsten carbide alloy, at least to start. If that doesn't work she can get fancy. 

The ghost she's trapped inside the cage bangs against the glass. It's not the spectre of a person, which she'd actually feel bad about, but an animated little blob of ectoplasm shaped like a peanut. Stray psychokinetic energy, no doubt the result of someone's nervous breakdown or wet dream. 

Holtzmann switches on the plasma generator. The ecto-peanut bangs itself against the glass, but the proton field spraying through the sheets of Plexiglass keeps it inside. She puts two fingertips against the glass, and the ecto-peanut actually grows a little mouth and bites at it. "Wow," she murmurs, "you really don't want to be in there, huh?" She sticks her hands into the containment gloves and begins to manipulate the levers that will guide the plutonium core towards the tungsten alloy. "Too bad. You shouldn't have been haunting little Tiffany's closet." 

A blue glow fills the containment chamber when the metals connect. Holtzmann watches in fascination as the ghost sprouts little arms, banging the stubs on the glass before they turn into tiny articulated fists. Is it her imagination, or is the blob getting bigger? She should have added measurement lines to the cage, something to remember the next time. It's turning bluer as well, the shade going from snot green to emerald to a deep turquoise. Amazing. She bends down and studies it for signs of distress. 

The ghost gathers up its energy, flattening itself against the far wall of the cage. It rushes forward. There's a heavy _thud_ , and the Plexiglass explodes outward. _Zap_. Plasma escapes, proton beams stabbing out into blue-tinted air. There's a pulse of blindingly bright turquoise light. Holtzmann's feet lose contact with the ground. Her back connects with the floor. Something hot and sickly passes through her body, not like the heat of fire but like the heat of a fever. 

Seconds count, but she's blinded. She blinks rapidly and rolls over, groping for the controls to the containment cage. Her hands fall on the cord that leads to the apparatus's power cord. She yanks desperately on it. The cord goes slack in her hands. The zaps stop, and the blue light fades from her vision. The tungsten sheet clatters to the floor. The ghost cackles and chitters above her, then flits out the window. Holtzmann thinks about trying to get to her proton gun, but her arms are shaky when she tries to get up and her legs nearly collapse under her. Fine, then. She lowers herself back to the floor. Time to do the cold equations. 

She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling, concentrating on writing the numbers in invisible black ink on the white canvas of the plaster. _X_ roentgen for _y_ seconds means she got _z_ rad. Where's the Geiger counter when you really need it? Her toolkit is on a workbench and she can't possibly pull herself up. She crawls to the workbench and pushes it over. Instruments fall with a clatter, and she flinches when the whole piece of furniture crashes to the floor. The Geiger counter doesn't even turn on. She pries it apart with a screwdriver, slashing a big red slice across her hand in the process. The insides are melted together into one big metallic blob that's already cool to the touch. 

Holtzmann's insides spasm painfully. She drops the Geiger counter and drags herself to the nearest garbage can, retches into it. Her glasses slip off her nose and clatter against the floor. She rolls over, resting her stomach and chest against the cool tile. Her head pounds and her skin prickles with heat. 

What a stupid, stupid way to die. She could have fallen off a mountain in Tibet, watched the sky swirl above her during the long drop in the cold, clear air. She could have been ripped to shreds by a pissed-off dragon ghost thing, or suffocated while dual-wielding proton guns in an apocalyptically deserted Times Square. Instead it's Sunday afternoon, and she was bored, and she got outsmarted by a blob of ectoplasm smaller than a softball. 

They'll have to wall off the whole floor. Maybe the whole building, depending on how far the radiation spread before she stopped the reaction. Her body's going to rot in here. Tears boil in her eyes and scald her cheeks. She isn't even going to get to say goodbye to anyone before she dies. They'll have no idea what happened to her. 

It isn't _fair_. She's spent so much of her life alone and lonely and directionless. It's only just begun to sink in that she's going to get to spend years with three new best friends, and a job she loves more than anything she's ever done, and people who look up to her and high-five her on the street. Now it's all being taken away from her because of a stupid, stupid mistake. 

Panic seizes in her chest. In the years she's been hunting ghosts with Abby and the months she's been capturing them with the Ghostbusters, she's given so little thought to the subject of her own demise. What if she comes back? Will it even be _her_ , or a mindless and violent shade? Would it be worse to never see them again? She doesn't want to die, she can't possibly come to terms with it now when there's so much ahead of her--and that means she's probably going to fight her way back across the barrier. 

Chromosomes break down. DNA unravels. Heat creeps outwards from within, slow oxidising reactions flaring into brilliant life. Her skin is going numb in patches, and it's better than the burning. She turns her head and can feel hair detaching itself from her scalp. Dull and heavy skin sloughs off, leaving her light and floating above herself. 

It's stopped raining outside. The sky is parched blue at the edges, a white and brilliant sun filling up the heavens. Under her feet, the world teems with throbbing green life. She clings to it, curling her toes into the material world and burying her fingers in her settling body. _I'll just stay until they come back_ , she promises the light. It shrinks away into heavy grey clouds. 

Rain falls through her face, or it's a plastic cup on her lips and water spilling down her chin, or someone else's tears. 

_Just until I can tell Abby what's it's like,_ she thinks, and she waits.


End file.
